


The Catalyst

by janie_tangerine, magnetodibs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Panic Attack, crazy!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetodibs/pseuds/magnetodibs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[This is based on Producer's preview clip for 7x23 so mild spoilers for the finale]</p>
<p>Dean and Sam ask Castiel for help, but  have to step up to the plate when it triggers a panic attack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Catalyst

“Dean.” Sam warns him when Dean’s voice becomes dangerously loud. He can already see Castiel fidgeting in his place, playing with the belt of his coat nervously. 

“Don’t ‘Dean’ me! He owes us! Least he can do is help bring down the Leviathans!” Dean shouts, his hands flying upwards in defence. 

Suddenly, Cas speaks. 

“I can’t help. You understand, I can’t.” He sounds nervous, unsure, and Dean almost smirks, wanting to ask him whether he’s trying to convince them or himself. He doesn’t get a chance. 

“I destroyed everything. And I will destroy everything again.” He blinks nervously and lowers his head, trying to keep still, but it’s obviously a hard task for him. 

“Goddamn, Cas!” Dean snaps.

“I can’t. I don’t want to fight. I can’t fight.” Castiel is stammering, making Dean and Sam exchange looks. He’s been mostly blabbering lately, but not like this. 

“I want to watch the bees. And the flowers. I can’t help, do you understand? Do you? I can’t help...” He disappears just for a second, the next - he’s standing in the middle of the room, frowning at himself. 

Sam gets it first - Castiel is having a panic attack of sorts, he can’t control himself like this. 

“Cas, it’s all right,” Sam tries to calm him down before they have to deal with a full-on angel freak out. Castiel is clearly not in control of himself - he can’t even teleport. But Castiel either doesn’t hear him or ignores him.

“I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to fight! Why do you all want me to fight? Everyone wants something from me and I just want to watch the bees.” Repeating these words like a mantra, he frowns and holds his arms around himself in attempt to make his body obey, to keep still. 

Dean nods at Sam to do something, but Sam only shakes his head. “No, this is your mess, you clean it up.” 

“How is that my -” Dean starts, but then he hears a soft thud coming from behind him, as if someone had just sunk to their knees.

“Oh, shit,” Sam swears, and when Dean turns on his back he sees that he was right - Cas has fallen on his knees. He’s looking down at his shaking hands, palms turned upward, and there’s something in the way his eyes are narrowing that Dean doesn’t like at all.

“You don’t see it,” Cas whispers, eerily calm, and Dean doesn’t like the way that sounds either. It sounds calm verging on about to become hysterical.

“What?” Sam asks, taking a step closer.

“There’s so much blood,” Cas says, and oh shit, oh shit. “So much blood.” His voice pitches high on blood, and then all of a sudden the light bulb above them explodes, along with the two of the other three lamps in the room.The light goes on and off, on and off, and by now Cas’ shoulders are shaking and he’s muttering something in Enochian in a tone that verges on panicked, and for a moment Dean feels a pang of guilt - maybe he shouldn’t have pushed this much.

And then Sam grabs his arm.

“Dean, will you just do something?”

Dean drops his voice to a hiss while the tv turns itself on and a sound of static fills up the room. “You’re the one who knows how to - how to deal with this. You can’t seriously -

“What I know is that if you had been a little more careful and less of a dick, maybe he wouldn’t be freaking out on us. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need me to talk him out of this. At least he deserves you acknowledging that you fucked up. Go.”

Sam’s sporting a bitchface to end all bitchfaces, the kind that says no, you deal with it. Dean turns back to Cas, noticing that now he’s clutching at his hair with one hand while the other curls up in a fist grabbing the fabric of his scrubs. And fuck, fuck, he feels kind of bad now. Not that he regrets what he’s doing, they need Cas and he should help them if only because he was the one who started this mess, but Sam is right about one thing at least - he could have been a little more considerate. Or at least considerate enough not to make Cas freak out. He could have - well, no point in dwelling over it now. He takes a breath and turns his back to Sam, kneeling in front of Cas and wishing he had a clue on how you do this kind of thing.

‘Here goes nothing’ he thinks, and places his hand on the angel’s shoulder. Cas might be off his rocker, but he snaps Dean’s hand right off. 

“I don’t want to fight!” He yells, again, and Dean feels lost. 

“I’m not trying to fight, Cas, listen to me.” He keeps his hands to himself this time, trying to sound as calm as possible, even though - how the hell do you calm an angel of the Lord down? - he keeps talking. “Look, I’m gonna just talk to you, all right? You need to focus on me. You don’t have to fight, we won’t make you if you don’t want to.” 

“I don’t.” Cas says, shaking, looking up at Dean, which he thinks is a good sign. What he can’t deal with is the amount of trust and pleading in his eyes. The way he looks at him.

He hears Sam open a window, and thinks it’s a good idea as well. 

“So we’re not fighting, all right? Just talking. You want to tell me, uh....about those bees of yours?”

Sam appears behind him and hands him a paper bag. Dean frowns, taking it. “You think he needs that?” 

“Look at him, man, he’s shaking as a leaf.” Sam frowns in return.

Castiel stills for a short moment, observing the bag curiously. Dean opens it on front of him, placing his hand at the back of Cas’ head. “You gotta breathe into it. It will help. Trust me.” 

The angel is eyeing him with doubt, but goes with it. The look of them both on their knees in the middle of the room must be comical, but neither of them is laughing. Cas starts breathing and his shoulders relax after a while, surprising both himself and Dean at the effect of a simple paper bag. 

“That’s it. Just breathe. Think about the bees.” Dean feels relieved. He doesn’t notice how his fingers brush through the soft hair at the back of Cas’ neck. It’s soothing and he just goes with it. 

The more calm Cas becomes, the more the expression on his face changes. He’s averting his eyes now, and Dean suddenly feels like he won’t have any of it. He won’t let the angel have another anxiety attack. 

“You’re doing great.” He’s aware that he can probably let go now, but he lets his fingers linger a little longer. Cas doesn’t seem to mind, either.

Dean takes advantage of the moment to take a better look at Cas - he doesn’t seem to be losing for the moment, but there’s something so very human about the way his shoulders slump, and about his fingers still more or less clutching at the paper bag. And it’s just strange because after all Cas is still an angel despite his current state. Then again, he’s not an expert on broken angels, so what does Dean know anyway? Not to mention that when Dean puts his other hand on Cas’s shoulder he realizes that he’s tense.

This isn’t over by a long shot. He sighs, keeps on running his fingers through Cas’ hair, wishing he knew what the fuck he should say here. Not only he sucks at doing this kind of thing at any given occasion, but he also doesn’t exactly have training to deal with someone who on top of freaking out isn’t also thinking clearly in the first place.

“Feeling better?” he asks then, figuring that putting it neutrally won’t hurt.

Cas looks up at him for one second, closes his eyes, gives him a shaky nod that suggests only that if maybe he feels better, this doesn’t mean that he’s feeling good. He closes his eyes again, his head bowing down, and Dean feels a small pang of guilt at that. Maybe it's time for him to realize that acting like nothing has changed (or little has changed) won’t help any - treating Cas the way he’d have treated him before the entire Leviathans fiasco isn’t really an option. Regardless of how much Cas fucked up.

“Fine. Fine, you don’t need to say anything. Take another breath, all right? Just one.”

He doesn’t expect Cas to actually do it at once but the moment it happens he decides that this isn’t the time for looking a gift horse in the mouth. “Good. Another one.”

He coaxes Cas into doing it for another minute until he lets the paper bag drop to the ground - there are a couple of holes he ripped into it, but hey, he didn’t tear it into pieces. It’s good enough.

He doesn’t expect Cas’ hand to reach up and cover his shoulder a handful of seconds later.

“Dean,” he starts, and for a moment Cas manages to sound as high and mighty as he used to back when they met first. “I suppose you don’t know some basic facts about bees.”

“As in? Tell me then,” Dean answers. He doesn’t know what Cas is fishing for here but if it means that he’s talking to him, making sense or not, then it’s fine. Anything that might turn this into a conversation where no one is freaking out.

“One single bee has to fly ninety thousand miles in order to collect two pounds of honey. I suppose you could say that it flies a long distance for a meager quantity.”

“I guess?” Dean is totally out of his depth by now. But Cas is looking a bit more grounded and Dean has no idea of what is socially acceptable to say in these cases. If Cas wants to discuss bees, then sure. Why not.

“Well, I remember having flown a long distance for a meager human soul.” Cas’ lips curl up for a moment before his eyes drop down to the ground again. “And you know I’m always glad to bleed for you, but Dean, I can’t.”

Dean’s throat goes dry at that, and shit, that’s why he hates this kind of thing. He never knows what to say, he never knows what to do, and what does anyone say in the face of that, ‘thank you and by the way, I’m sorry that I’ve been pretty fucking inconsiderate?’. Dean hears Sam clearing his throat before he hears feet shuffling and a door being opened and closed. 

At least someone here is not inconsiderate, he thinks, and he wants to laugh but nothing in this entire situation is funny.

The silence is getting deafening, and Castiel keeps avoiding looking at him. He would look anywhere but at him. At least this way it’s easier to talk. 

Dean clears his throat, relieved that Cas seems to be calm now. “I get it, Cas.” And he does, he just hopes it’s not too late. 

He sighs, running a hand through his own hair. All the words seem stupid, but it’s obvious that the angel is waiting for him to say something, judging by those blue eyes gazing up at him. “Just, stick around, Cas. Will you?” 

“You want me to stay?” He asks, and Dean almost curses under his breath by how surprised Cas sounds. Of course he wants him to stick around. He should have realized that way earlier. 

“Yeah, that’s what I want. And Sam, uh, I’m sure Sam wants that, too.” 

Cas looks at him for a long moment, with such curiosity that Dean is feeling even more weird under his gaze than usual. 

“Nobody ever wanted me to stay before.” He says,at last, and it’s Dean’s turn to avert his eyes. 

Son of a bitch. Dean’s pretty sure he isn’t doing it on purpose, he’s still as naive as a baby, but it does sound like the angel is shaming him, and frankly, it’s working.

His trail of thoughts is broken by a very unsteady body throwing itself at him, and he can only realize it’s a hug the moment his arms clasp around Cas’ shoulders by reflex. 

“Thank you.” Cas says, quiet but eager. Dean can only nod and pat his back gently. He feels out of his depth all over again - for some reason the entire thing feels a lot more awkward than he’d like for it to be, and then he wonders whether Cas has ever done this at all. Something tells him that the answer is no, and for some reason that Dean doesn’t really want to dwell about it sounds.. really fucking depressing. Even for his standards, and it’s not like Dean’s standards aren’t the epitome of fucked up.

He sighs - in for a penny, in for a pound has never sounded more appropriate - and figures that for now he could - well. Put some effort. If someone flies that shitload of miles in order to rise you from Perdition they deserve at least that. He sighs, standing up and grabbing Cas’ elbow.

“Come on,” Dean says. “If we wanna do this at least let’s do it properly.” Cas doesn’t protest and goes along until they get to the sofa. Dean sits down with his back against the armrest and then pulls on Cas’ elbow so that he ends up sitting next to him. He arranges them both so that Cas’ head is on his shoulder and he has one arm around Cas’ waist and the other resting on his neck. Cas just goes with it, as if he has no idea what Dean is trying to do but he’ll let him, until Dean finally settles.

“Oh,” Cas says, sounding as if he’s pondering some kind of philosophical question. “This is a lot nicer.” He says it weird, halfway between matter of fact and surprised, and then he proceeds to - well. Before he had been just clutching at him, now he’s pressing up gently against Dean, his body finally going lax, and Dean figures that he can spare some time (even if not much.) 

He doesn’t know when Sam gets back, but when he does, neither of them has attempted to move away.


End file.
